By AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE, TEL AVIV, Sep 15 – Tens of thousands of Africans who fled misery at home for safety in Israel are living in limbo, fearing deportation though some have lived in the country for more than a decade.

Recognising a rising tide of discontent among Israelis over the migrants’ presence in south Tel Aviv, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently visited the area.

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He posed for TV cameras with an elderly woman who said she was afraid to leave her apartment at night for fear of her African neighbours.

“We will return south Tel Aviv to the citizens of Israel,” Netanyahu pledged, adding that the Africans were “not refugees but illegal infiltrators”.

Adi Drori-Avraham, of the Aid Organisation for Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Israel (ASSAF), says that although they originally crossed the border “irregularly”, they have since been issued short-term residence visas.

“They’re not illegal because they go every two months and they get a visa from the ministry of the interior,” she said.

“They’re here and they work and they pay taxes. They’re not illegal.”

Israeli government figures from June 30 show a total of 38,043 African migrants in the country. They include 27,494 Eritreans and 7,869 Sudanese.

A 2016 UN commission of inquiry into Eritrea’s harsh regime found “widespread and systematic” crimes against humanity and said an estimated 5,000 people flee the country each month.

The International Criminal Court has indicted Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir on charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide related to his regime’s counter-insurgency tactics in the 14-year-old conflict in Darfur.

Drori-Avraham says that among those seeking asylum in Israel are “thousands” from Darfur whose applications have yet to receive an answer.

“Some of them have been waiting for years,” she said.

– ‘Didn’t choose it’ –

Migrants started coming in large numbers across the porous border between Israel and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula in 2007, when nearly 5,000 entered, interior ministry figures show.

By 2011 the number had shot up to more than 17,000 but the following year the government completed fencing the border and deploying electronic sensors.

In 2013, only 43 people were caught, while in the first six months of this year nobody made it across.

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